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More unexpected connections
I just stumbled across Lois McMaster Bujold's account of a visit to "The Congress of Russian Science Fiction Writers" in September 2000. https://hell.pl/szymon/Baen/Cryoburn/Travel%20Memoirs/Russian%20Impressions.doc
And after finding an online site to convert it out of Microsoft Word format, I was astonished and amused in the first page to stumble upon a description of the in-flight movie as a Russian-made American Western starring "[and rather delightfully, I might add] M.Boyarski and O.Tabakov" (d'Artagnan and Louis XIII)! I'm pretty sure this must be the movie that I've seen multiple stills from, cited as having originated Boyarsky's now-iconic public image with broad-brimmed black hat and black clothing in his screen role as the character "Chërniy Jack" :-D
In fact I watched an interview with him in the "Lichnie Veshchi" ("Personal Things") TV series from Russia's Channel 5, in which one of the representative 'personal things' that each interviewee is supposed to bring out as prompts for the conversation -- in addition to the sword given to him by "my beloved enemy" Vladimir Balon/de Jussac, during a reunion dinner hosted by Smekhov, and which I therefore had actually watched him receive! -- was the black leather coat from that same film, which he had apparently had to buy out of his own pocket. And when the director wanted to make a sequel twenty years later -- there it was, ready as always :-)
I can't find any trace that she actually *did* make a sequel, but the film itself is yet another thing that sounds interesting, along with Balon's own first on-screen appearance, a tiny role in "The Hussar Ballad", a filmed operetta from 1963 (apparently available on YouTube with real subtitles) in which he had helped choreograph the fencing sequences...
Commentary on "A Man from Boulevard des Capucines": "There's a very specific talent required to successfully mix absolute sincerity with absurdist humor, and it's one that, for about 20 years from the mid-1960s to the 1980s, seems to have resided primarily in the USSR. The way a variety of Soviet filmmakers could gracefully infuse their comedy with the kind of truth that brings tears to the eye of the viewer is simply uncanny" -- 'absolute sincerity mixed with absurdist humour' is in fact a pretty apt summary of the appeal of "The Three Musketeers and One Boyarsky", as Smekhov long ago dubbed their film ;-)
"wrapped around all of this idealism is slapstick humor galore, lots of showgirl legs, and a handful of killer songs" -- likewise an apt summary of the other production also, with the exception of the admirable legs on show, which in a 17th-century setting belong to the Musketeers rather than their ladies ;-)
And after finding an online site to convert it out of Microsoft Word format, I was astonished and amused in the first page to stumble upon a description of the in-flight movie as a Russian-made American Western starring "[and rather delightfully, I might add] M.Boyarski and O.Tabakov" (d'Artagnan and Louis XIII)! I'm pretty sure this must be the movie that I've seen multiple stills from, cited as having originated Boyarsky's now-iconic public image with broad-brimmed black hat and black clothing in his screen role as the character "Chërniy Jack" :-D
In fact I watched an interview with him in the "Lichnie Veshchi" ("Personal Things") TV series from Russia's Channel 5, in which one of the representative 'personal things' that each interviewee is supposed to bring out as prompts for the conversation -- in addition to the sword given to him by "my beloved enemy" Vladimir Balon/de Jussac, during a reunion dinner hosted by Smekhov, and which I therefore had actually watched him receive! -- was the black leather coat from that same film, which he had apparently had to buy out of his own pocket. And when the director wanted to make a sequel twenty years later -- there it was, ready as always :-)
I can't find any trace that she actually *did* make a sequel, but the film itself is yet another thing that sounds interesting, along with Balon's own first on-screen appearance, a tiny role in "The Hussar Ballad", a filmed operetta from 1963 (apparently available on YouTube with real subtitles) in which he had helped choreograph the fencing sequences...
Commentary on "A Man from Boulevard des Capucines": "There's a very specific talent required to successfully mix absolute sincerity with absurdist humor, and it's one that, for about 20 years from the mid-1960s to the 1980s, seems to have resided primarily in the USSR. The way a variety of Soviet filmmakers could gracefully infuse their comedy with the kind of truth that brings tears to the eye of the viewer is simply uncanny" -- 'absolute sincerity mixed with absurdist humour' is in fact a pretty apt summary of the appeal of "The Three Musketeers and One Boyarsky", as Smekhov long ago dubbed their film ;-)
"wrapped around all of this idealism is slapstick humor galore, lots of showgirl legs, and a handful of killer songs" -- likewise an apt summary of the other production also, with the exception of the admirable legs on show, which in a 17th-century setting belong to the Musketeers rather than their ladies ;-)